Cardinals
(Canada, 84 min.)
Dir. Aidan Shipley, Grayson Moore; Writ. Grayson Moore
Starring: Sheila McCarthy, Noah Reid, Katie Boland, Grace
Glowicki, Peter MacNeill, Peter Spence
Sheila McCarthy gives the performance of her career in Cardinals. Is this really the same woman
who was so effervescent and full of life in I’ve
Heard the Mermaids Singing? If McCarthy made audiences soar with Mermaids, she lets them feel the sharp
pain of hitting rock bottom in Cardinals.
Playing Valerie Walker, a suburban mother who returns home from prison after
serving time for killing her neighbour in an alleged drunk driving incident, her
subdued performance is a master class in restraint. I am in awe of her
intensity and focus.
Her parole requirements require AA meetings and sobriety.
However, her first request upon returning home is to have a glass of wine. She
insists that she isn’t an alcoholic and never was. The night of the incident
seems to be a fluke in the life of a woman who was otherwise a model for humdrum
suburban ordinariness.
Nobody in Cardinals,
however, is as they seem. The victim’s son, Mark (Noah Reid), at first comes
seeking answers and closures. It’s Valerie’s mistake, though, in thinking he
comes offering forgiveness. Her daughter Eleanor (Katie Boland) plays the part
of dutiful child, ready to assist her mother’s return to society, but she’s also
eager to do the old suburban routine of acting as if nothing happened. The
incident clearly makes her uncomfortable. Valerie’s other daughter, Zoe (Grace
Glowicki), thinks they should all just move on and stay friendly with Mark as
if their Valerie only borrowed his father’s ladder and failed to return it.
This polite, neighbourly bunch holds a tricky web of secrets and lies that expose
themselves slowly, methodically, and messily as the film culiminates to an
unexpected finale.
Cardinals is a
brilliantly plotted drama in which the characters unfold with delicate
revelations. Newcomers Aidan Shipley and Grayson Moore deliver an enigmatic simmering
puzzler driven by intriguing characters and deep performances. As the pieces
fall into place, Cardinals shifts our
perceptions of right and wrong, of victimhood and agency, and of innocence and
justice. Everyone is in on the crime, but the web makes victims of them all, to
an extent, as the strong ensemble creates complex characters in whom a viewer
is equally invested despite shifting loyalties.
The central gear that turns everything, though, is McCarthy.
Valerie challenges and surprises the viewer with her sombre sobriety. Even as
the truths reveal themselves, McCarthy doesn’t let audiences see Valerie as being
in the right or in the wrong. One watches her quiet, observant performance and knows that depite Valerie's hardened, joyless exterior, a good woman and mother lives inside. This character inhabits a spectrum of grays, evoked
brilliantly in the film’s muted colour palettes, as she grasps the full scope
of her crimes without an ounce of regret. The nice little lady across the
street is not at all what she seems.
Cardinals opens Aug. 31 at TIFF Lightbox and hits iTunes day and
date.
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